News From the Cause
Giffords' Recovery Renews Focus on Vet Coverage Gap (Military.com)
August 16, 2011
WASHINGTON -- From the critical moments after she suffered a gunshot wound to the head in January to her triumphant return to Congress last week for a vote on the debt limit deal, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords owes her recovery in no small part to veterans with similar injuries.
Doctors and rehabilitation specialists have learned a great deal from the treatment of traumatic brain injuries in combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. One in five veterans of those wars has suffered some form of traumatic brain injury, most commonly concussions from roadside bombs.
Yet veterans' health care doesn't consistently cover cognitive rehabilitation therapy, the same therapy that's helped Giffords and other well-known figures -- such as Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota and ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff -- get their lives back to normal after major brain traumas.
"If we fail to give people the tools they need to do that, then we've shut them out of society," said Susan Connors, the president of the Brain Injury Association of America.
"It is a national disgrace," said Paul Rao, the president of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association and Johnson's speech therapist.
When people suffer traumatic brain injuries, they need more than just to learn how to walk and talk again.
Cognitive rehabilitation can include speech and communication therapies, and therapies to boost memory and social skills and relearn routine tasks such as getting dressed and shopping at the grocery store.
Connors compared it to elementary school.
Except that "you aren't learning it for the first time; you are relearning it," she said.
Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said in an email that under the TRICARE insurance plan, which covers members of the military, rehabilitation therapy "must be medically necessary and appropriate care keeping with accepted norms for medical practice in the U.S."
Brain-injury advocates say TRICARE and civilian health-insurance providers deny payment for cognitive rehabilitation on the basis that it isn't proven effective, despite its wide embrace in the medical community and by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Part of the problem is cost, typically $27,000 for one hour a day of treatment over six months. Click here to view more
